I’ve been going through a bit of a rut with my faith. I’ve felt forgotten by God, unable to feel his presence and just unable to see where He is working. I’ve been praying, asking Him to show me where He is. Asking for Him to reveal what He is doing with everything I’ve endured the past few months. The past few weeks, I’ve kind of been convinced that He isn’t listening, He doesn’t care, that I did something wrong to the point that God was so mad at me that He was just going to ignore me and that’s why nothing is changing.

I’ve been trying to read through the book of Ruth. Great book, it’s very short, so you could easily read it in just a day or even just in thirty minutes, but I’ve been trying to take a deeper dive into what the message of Ruth is. I haven’t completely finished the study that I am reading, but I am continually finding the same message throughout the first chapter. God is Faithful, He is sovereign, and that our own human flesh can prevent us from seeing that.

I’ve had a lot of things be revealed to me the past few months, a lot of things I didn’t realize were painful, I thought that was just how things were for everyone. I realized ways that I was mislead and deceived for a very long time and that I truly just thought they were normal, but they really were more damaging to me than I ever expected. These things that have been revealed to me, have been hard to process. It’s been a lot of hurt, mostly emotionally, because I didn’t realize I was being deceived for so long. It’s caused me to question everything I’ve ever trusted; Including Christ.

In the book of Ruth, Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem to get out of famine after the passing of both of their husbands. The town was, of course, like any Earthly town would do, gossip and talk about them.

“So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the Beginning of barley harvest.

Ruth 1: 19-21

In Hebrew, “Mara” means bitter. Naomi was bitter to the point it literally became her identity. She is doing just as I have been doing! Believing the lies that God has something against me, that God is the one that had hurt me. That He is the one that caused all of the pain and the hurt that I’ve endured the past few months. But in reality, we live in a broken world, that is what hurt me. And even with that I can’t hold onto that hurt, I have to hold to what I know is good, and His name is Jesus.

She’s holding onto that bitterness so tightly that even a glimpse of God’s goodness can’t reach her. She’s blinded so harshly by the past’s hurt that she is unable to see the light ahead of her. By doing this, she isn’t even recognizing that God brought her out of famine into a literal harvest.

Naomi also talks about how the Lord emptied her after she had left so full, but she’s failing to realize that it wasn’t Christ that had filled her in the first place, she was filled with the wrong things, the things of this earth. God emptied her, so she COULD be filled with Him. I can’t help but feel so similarly to Naomi. It’s so easy to hold onto the past and let it hold us back from what God has planned out for us. But holding onto the hurt is so damaging to our relationship with Christ, because we miss Him in every aspect of our lives. We have to hand over the pain we’ve endured to the One who can fix our broken hearts. It’s hard to do, and I personally am still working on it. Once we let it go, we can live in His fullness, in His goodness and be able to see clearly where He wants us to go.

But we have to let go of what we are holding onto so tightly, we have to empty our cups that full of our own bitterness, our own pain and just ourselves in order to allow Christ to fill us up.

There is Hope. He is still hearing your prayers, even if it feels silent. He is not a do-nothing God. He is everything we need and more. Give the pain to the One who can fill the broken pieces of our hearts. He will turn them into a harvest.

“The Hope of Heaven Before me, the grave behind.

Hallelujah, You’ve brought me back to Life.”- Back to Life by Bethel Music and Zahriya Zachary